“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, everywhere you go.” The saleswoman in the consignment resale shop turns the music off, or down so low we can’t hear it. I’m fine with that because rather than get me in a holiday mood, the music seems to remind me of all I still have ahead of me. I’ve often wondered whose idea it was to have the most intense holiday celebrations, (Christmas, Chanukah, and Thanksgiving) so close to one another and to the New Year’s celebration which follows the end of the fiscal year. Living on the academic calendar as a student and then a teacher for many years, I got into the habit of putting off all preparations and thoughts of the holidays till after my grades were turned in. It was the only way I could avoid total overwhelm.
I hear the salesperson apologize to a new customer entering the store. “I’m sorry, I forgot I had turned the music down,” she says, and she turns it back up. “Are you ready for Christmas, the woman asks. I don’t answer. As a grief advocate, I know this time of year to be the most challenging for those who have lost loved ones to death or some other type of absence. There is no getting ready. This time of year, is the marker of that grieving reality, and coming together we must confront it.
It’s not just the lack of snow that mocks the disconnect of our reality from the sparkling Hallmark scenes and Christmas caroling of ads and greeting cards. Foreseeing the empty seats at the holiday table, or the chaos that will ensue as other family members attempt to fill a pivotal role in the social gathering brings dread rather than excitement, and lots of columns of advice on how to survive the holidays. Perhaps we need to go back further in history to the ceremonies on which many of our holiday traditions had been based. Back to the realities of the natural world, the time in the northern hemisphere that is the longest night when our world is plunged into darkness.
I had an art-based experience of the Winter Solstice this past week, thanks to a musician friend, Elizabeth Jett-Downing and her Eco-spiritual rock concert. As a member of the movement choir, I was honored to celebrate in three parts in a “Tree Dance,” the Spirit of Darkness” the comfort and restful quality of darkness – the “Spirit in Nature,” paying homage to the immutable vitality within the evergreen tree that occupied the center of the space, and the “Spirit in Us,” recognizing that the divine is incarnate in every plant and animal and in us.
There is no expectation to begin in merriment. We begin in darkness and follow the light as it builds and brightens the room. As the dancers connect with one another and light the tree in the center of the space, the darkness is overcome, and our spirits are lifted. We’ll carry the joyful reassurance of this enactment with us as darkness continues to wain and light returns slowing throughout the coming months till the warmth of spring and new life arrives.
As I travel to be with family members this holiday season and remember together two sisters who have left us this year, I’m wishing for you that wherever you gather and with whom, peace joy, and love will light up your spaces, and carry you forward into and through the new year of 2024.
